Avionics systems include all of the electronic systems, components and instrumentation onboard airborne vehicles (e.g., aircraft, satellites, and spacecraft) that flight crews utilize for communications, navigation, weather tracking, collision avoidance, and the like. Avionics systems also include other onboard electronic systems that control, monitor and display critical operational and air safety parameters, such as, for example, flight and engine performance. As such, avionics systems must be capable of operating reliably and consistently throughout the entire in-flight missions of the airborne vehicles involved.
Nevertheless, the possibility exists that an onboard avionics' electronic system, component or instrument can fail during a flight. If the failure affects the operational performance of a vehicle such as an aircraft, the flight crew may be required to land the aircraft so that the ground-based maintenance personnel (e.g., customer support staff or CSS) can gain access to the avionics' data onboard the aircraft in order to accurately diagnose and resolve the problem. Unfortunately, this requirement to land the aircraft can cause significant scheduling problems with substantially increased operational and maintenance costs for the civil and governmental aviation entities (large or small) involved. Also, this requirement creates an undesirable operational issue referred to as an aircraft on ground (AOG) situation.
Notably, flight crews are often required to assist the CSS with troubleshooting in-flight maintenance problems by communicating directly with the CSS and describing the problems in real-time. However, this requirement substantially increases the flight crew's workload since the crew members must maintain their primary functions (e.g., aviation, navigation and communications) while simultaneously interacting with the CSS. For example, the CSS may instruct the crew members to describe their observations of the current maintenance problem in detail, attempt to recall any similar maintenance problems that occurred in the past, and provide their impression of the state of the flight deck avionics prior to the interaction with the CSS. Furthermore, while diagnosing a problem during a flight, the CSS may instruct the flight crew to perform certain maintenance tasks and describe the resulting effects. Unfortunately, however, the accuracy of the descriptive information that can be provided during the interactive, voice communications between the CSS and the flight crews is often limited significantly by one or more of a plurality of common voice communication hindrances such as, for example, heavily accented speech, language barriers, omissions of critical information, miscommunications, intermittent communications media (e.g., satellite communications), and the like. Consequently, the descriptive information provided during interactive, voice communications between flight crews and ground-based maintenance personnel can be misinterpreted and the problem or fault misdiagnosed as a result.
For the reasons stated above and for other reasons stated below which will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading and understanding the specification, there is a need in the art for systems and methods that can resolve issues with avionics in-flight, which are less burdensome on flight crews while providing accurate resolutions of the issues.